Kahlo at the Crossroads

In 1932, Frida Kahlo painted a piece titled Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States (Autorretrato Entre la Frontera de México y los Estados Unidos), in which she paints herself standing on a border marker between the two countries named in the title, wearing an “uncharacteristically sweet pink frock and lace gloves” (Herrera 96). This bright pink dress almost glows in its juxtaposition to the muted and muddy background, immediately highlighting the duality and conflict present in this painting. This conflicting duality seems to be a theme not only in her paintings but also in her life, perhaps first beginning with parents of Mexican and European descent. How she navigates the chasm that is created by the bifurcation of her life—the feminine and masculine, Mexican and European heritage, abled and disabled bodies, indigenous and urban colonialism, painter and wife, light and dark, life and death—appears to be the central question she is continuously in search of an answer to in many of her paintings.

Kahlo stands poised and stoic in the painting, yet her nipples perceptibly protrude from her bodice, almost taboo in such a proper dress. In one hand, she holds the Mexican flag, clearly stating where her allegiances lie between the two countries. In the other, Kahlo holds a cigarette loosely, almost nonchalantly, as if to note that though her expression belies nothing, she is at ease with her risqué attitude. The statement “Carmen Rivera painted her portrait in 1932” is carved into the concrete marker upon which she stands, possibly a jab at the U.S. press that referenced her as “Rivera’s petite wife who sometimes dabbled in paint” (Herrera 98). All of this aligns with her pattern “of shocking people, of mocking everything around her” (Fuentes 0:38:18-0:38:23) and highlights the divarication in how she navigated the world. To be alive at a time when women’s responsibilities lay primarily in demurely domestic or supportive roles, Kahlo places herself in the center, deftly straddling the boundary.

Behind Kahlo, in the sky to her right, a fire-spewing sun and crescent moon with anthropomorphized faces look down upon the lands of Mexico, and where their respective clouds meet, a lightning bolt strikes an ancient and crumbling temple. Below the temple, loose rocks, idols, and fertility gods lie in the mid-ground, perhaps representing life, art, and tradition. In the foreground are the flowers and foliage of Mexico, their roots reaching into the earth. On Kahlo’s left side, a modern America, represented by skyscrapers and smokestacks, FORD emblazoned in black letters, reaches to the sky. Here, Kahlo presents herself as Henry Ford’s equal; Ford’s name is the only one in the painting besides Kahlo’s own, Carmen Rivera. The smokestacks spew forth industrial clouds, partially obstructing a floating American flag. Below the industrial scene, objects that are steely and humanoid in their rendering reach out toward the ground with angled cylindrical protuberances. In the foreground on the American side are three electrified objects, their electrical cords reaching into the ground like their living counterparts on the Mexican side. The cables of the object closest to Kahlo, which appears to be an electric motor, connect to one of the plant’s root systems and another to the borderstone Kahlo stands on. Could this implicate that the object, which appears to be a motor, powers the base, or is it her strength that powers the motor? The orange color of the furthest object to the right echoes the sun’s orange hue in the top left corner of the painting, perhaps signifying a potential cohesion between these didactic views.

Kahlo created this painting while she was in Detroit. Her representation of America as a cold, steely, inhuman industrialist land must have been informed from her time in the automobile capitol of the world. It probably didn’t help that she suffered a miscarriage while in that city. In the painting, her face is turned away from the stark image of America and looks toward her native Mexico. She grows increasingly homesick during her time in Detroit, but it is also where, “for the first time, [Kahlo] consciously decides that she will paint about herself and that she will paint the most private and painful aspects of herself” (Zamudio-Taylor 0:40:01-0:40:15). Detroit may be considered a catalyst for Kahlo, her first trip outside of her native Mexico and dealing with such a personal loss, which “caused critical self-reflection and helped crystallize her self-image” (Block and Hoffman-Jeep 11). Self-Portrait straddles these incongruencies, just as her self-portrait straddles the borderland between the United States and Mexico. Again, her conflicted duality is on display in this painting, inviting us, the viewer, to share in that duality. While the two sides may oppose one another, they still balance the other out, with the colors and visual weight of the corners holding Kahlo in the center as an anchor to the painting. The contradictions are evident in the objects that surround her but are also apparent in herself. In this painting, Kahlo recognizes her past four years and their influence on her, but she clearly indicates what direction her future lies in.

Works Cited

Aragón, Alba F. “Uninhabited Dresses: Frida Kahlo, from Icon of Mexico to Fashion Muse.” Fashion Theory, vol. 18, no. 5, 2014, pp. 517-49.

Block, Rebecca, and Lynda Hoffman-Jeep. “Fashioning National Identity: Frida Kahlo in ‘Gringolandia.’” Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, 1998, pp. 8-12.

Herrera, Hayden. Frida Kahlo: The Paintings. 1991.

Kahlo, Frida. Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States. 1932.

The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. Directed by Amy Stechler, PBS Home Video, 2004. YouTube.